


Touching

by thealphagate_archivist



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-14
Updated: 2006-03-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 02:22:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12717744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thealphagate_archivist/pseuds/thealphagate_archivist
Summary: A Jack POV piece.





	Touching

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the archivists: this story was originally archived at [The Alpha Gate](https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Alpha_Gate), a Stargate SG-1 archive, which began migration to the AO3 in 2017 when its hosting software, eFiction, was no longer receiving support. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2017. We e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are this creator and it hasn't transferred to your AO3 account, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Alpha Gate collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/thealphagate).

I don't know how to touch him.

He's sitting there, right next to me. Solid, real. Back.

But I can't figure out how to do it.

He's the same, but... not. I've watched that numb, traumatized creature we found on P4T35G gradually unfold and turn back into our Daniel. My Daniel. And he's the same, but...

How do you reconnect to someone who's pretty much been a god? How do you just pick up after a year of... absence? Of having some imposter taking up his space? Of grieving, but not really?

He's Daniel, but more. There's a calm center to him that's new. That almost frantic edge that used to be so much a part of him is gone. I guess being a god changes you, even if you can't remember any of it.

Maybe I miss that bit of insecurity, that dependence. It was nice, being needed the way he used to need me.

But that was pretty much gone even... before. Before Kelowna. And if he'd needed me, I wasn't giving him much. We'd had a couple of tough years, the two of us.

But the touching used to be so easy. And I can't get the knack of it any more.

It just feels really weird. Like things sort of fade in and out. Him. He fades. There are moments when I'm sure I could still throw my shoe right through him. But there are also times when I feel like he's never been gone. More. Like we could go back to those days, three or four years ago, when we touched even when we weren't in the same room.

But I can't figure out how to get there.

Guess we're done. Carter's shuffling papers, Teal'c is out the door. And there he stands, leaning a bit against the doorjamb. And just for a moment, I see someone else. Awkward, shocked, too-long hair flopping in his eyes, wearing someone else's oversized fatigues. And so lost and hopeless.

And before I know it, he's riding home with me, gaze fixed out the passenger window as he takes in all that he's been without for so long.

And the touching still escapes me.

* * *

We hardly speak during dinner. The silence is heavy, strange between two men who've always had a lot to say to each other.

Now we stand in the hall, two feet and a million miles apart. He's leaning again, against the wall just by the guest room door, those big, solemn blue eyes fixed on my face, contemplating the mysteries of whatever superior beings contemplate.

My fingers spread against the wood of the door to my own bedroom, remembering and abruptly desperate to regain the lost past.

Why can't I touch him?

For a long moment, I meet his gaze, trying to fathom what's going on in that astounding mind. Attempting to find a ghost of my own disconcerting separation from reality reflected in his eyes.

His head tilts slightly, one brow lifting a fraction.

The breath tightens in my throat as I raise one hand, palm up in tentative entreaty. The tightness expands with the small upward tilt of the corners of his lips.

He follows as I back through the door, his eyes sweeping around the dimness of the bedroom.

Then he turns and truly smiles, hands reaching to cradle my face, and suddenly it's all back. And it's all easy.

My hands delight in the feel of his body as they slide around his torso; my lips tingle with joy as he kisses me with that concentration so characteristic of my Daniel; I can hardly bear the fierce excitement of brushing my chest against his, sliding my knee between his. Right through two sets of clothing.

This is it. It's wonderful, unbearable and inevitable. We haven't lost anything.

And touching is easy, after all.

~Ende~


End file.
